Is your battery causing your problems?

[JerryF]

ALL,

Because of the wide range of problems I see here (most recently by JoeNe and Gary) it made me wonder if BAD batteries might be the cause because so many have different problems yet so many others are okay.

First let's do this to level the playing field for these testa.  It will not reset you phone.  If you are afraid to do this forget this step. Removed the battery, the Micro SD card, and the SIM card for 60+ seconds and then put them back in.  NOTE:  before you start this process go to Settings>SD card & phone storage and click on Unmount SD card.  Then turn off your phone by holding the upper right side button for 10 seconds or until it turns off.  Remove the battery first and then the SD card and then the SIM card.  Be gentle with the SIM card and keep track of which direction goes in first and which side is up.

Wait 60+ seconds, insert the SD card and the SIM card and finally the battery.  Turn on the phone and go to Settings>SD card & phone storage and click on ReMount the SD card. You are set to go. 

Forget the little blue battery that show charging in the upper right corner of you home page screen.  To see your battery's charge level use the percent of charge instead.  In case anyone does not know here is where it is...from th Home page go to Settings>About Phone>Status and the second item down is Battery Level in percent and above that the Battery Status shows if it is charging or not.

A weak or failing battery can appear to charge up fully but in reality only it's voltage level is okay so the phone appears to operate okay.  What occurs is the amp hours, which are really the power in your battery, may also look good but in a weak or failing battery instead of lasting for hours the mini-amp hours (mAh's) of your battery may go down within a few minutes or an hour or a little heavy use by you.  For example, using the camera's flash could bring it down after one or two photos.  I'm sure some of you know that when your car battery is questionable they use a load tester which puts a electrical load on the battery for a few minutes and they measure how much that depleted the battery.

Test #1 is to the have a FULLY charged battery  It's important that it's fully charged so go take a look at its percentage of charge.  Next, have the phone plugged into the 115 volt electrical current, NOT the USB port because the USB port does not charge with as mich power as does the 115 volt charging.  Now use you phone that way for a while to see if any of your problems go away because you now have the highest and best power available.   Best of Luck!

Test #2 is to see if your battery loses it's mAh power to quickly.  In other words does it discharge to quickly.  Again start with a fully charged battery and the phone should NOT be plugged in for charging.  Go look at its percent of charge and write it down.  I hope it's 99% or more.  Then set your camera up and take EXACTLY 10 flash pictures, no more no less.  Set the flash to ON so it flashes every time.  I chose flash picture because they appear to use lot's of battery power.  After the pictures check the percentage of charge again.  Did it go down below 50% or further?  That may be a sign of a failing battery.  It is to bad we do not have any statistics regarding how far down it might go but do tell us your results for your test so we can compare.  We want the batteries % to start with and it's % at the end of the test.

For now tell use your results.

JerryF 

[JerryF]

I did test #2 on my phone.  I have an official Samsung 2600mAh battery in my phone.  Before the test my battery charge was 100% and after the test it was still 100%.  I did notice that after you take a flash photo the screen goes black for maybe 1/10th of a second but by the 9th and 10th flash photos the screen was going black for about 1 full second.  There was a delay.

Then I reinstalled the official Samsung battery that originally was in the phone (1600 mAh) and the phone said it was an UNOFFICAL battery which surprised me.  Before the test the charge was 99% and after it was 98%.  The black screen delays were a tiny bit more than 1 second slightly longer.

Can anyone answer this:  Why did it say cannot charge non supported battery??  Even when I reinstalled my official Samsung 2600 mAh battery it said cannot charge  non supported battery see user manual.  I am using the charger and cable that came with the phone and have always worked.

JerryF

[JerryF]

Another follow on to my previous post.  My phone said it was an un approved battery when I installed the official Samsung 1600 mAh battery and it would not charge the battery.  So I went to settings>about phone>Status and I noticed that the Battery Status said DISCHARGING as opposed to the usual NOT CHARGING.  What a surprise that was!

In the phone's manual Samsung says using an un supported battery MAY CAUSE DAMAGE to your phone.  In this case if it were to continue discharging at a high enough rate it could heat up the battery maybe causing a short circuit and in an extreme case cause a FIRE.  Remember all the laptop batteries that were causing fire.

I do hope that Samsung did not do like a hacker and program the phone to discharge the battery if a user put an unsupported battery in their phone.  NOTE:  My two batteries are both official Samsung batteries.  In fact one of them originally came with the phone. 

VERIZON and SAMSUNG should look into this because if this is the way it works someday one of them might be in for a big-damages law suit.

The scenario that I think of is a person switching an official Samsung battery, like I did, and the phone thinks it's an unsupported battery and starts discharging the battery.  Then the user plugs in the charger and leaves the premises for a few hours and returns later to a fire.

I ask again, does anyone know why this happened?

JerryF

[GreenRobot]

JerryF, I am trying some of your experements right now. Quick question though, do you work for anyone involoved with Android, Google, VZW, or any smartphone related field? 

[GreenRobot · Accepted solution]

As of right now my battery reads at 75% and I got ten pics then I decided to go for one more and it Blacked out and did come back. battery pull, reboot, and recheck battery Battery Level 72%... 

After that I decided to try again and can't get passed 4 pics before Blacking out and having to reboot. 

Note: OEM 2600mAh battery installed. I also run two stock 1600 mAh bats when I don't feel like carring the bulk ( one bat in the phone one in my wallet ). 

[ChaunceyM_VZW]

Hi GreenRobot! Thank you to the community members. We will need to address your concerns by completing troubleshooting. Can you please send me a PM and include a contact number and the best time to call. I look forward to working with you to find a solution. 

ChaunceyM_VZWSupport

Follow us on twitter @VZWSupport

[JerryF]

Gary, No I had my own Computer Security company from 1977 to 2000 and am retired now.

JerryF

[JerryF]

To me that seems to imply not enough power the more flash pictures you take.  I wish I knew how Samsung measured battery capacity.  Is it based on voltage or amperage? 

Your results seem to show that the battery is getting weaker quite quickly even though the % of charge only went from 75 to 72%.  I'll guess that with a fully charged battery and being plugged into the 115 volt wall plug for charging you could do 20 - 25 flash pictures without locking up. 

If so it probably is a battery problem.  OTOH, maybe a capacitor inside the Charge cannot be repowered fast enough.  Beyond that the internal electronics are beyond my knowledge.

JerryF

[GreenRobot]

Either way it is defiantly a problem with the device because I have had many cameras, phones w/ cameras, and Android powered smartphones with cameras and none have ever shut down after taking a few flash pictures. 

[27613rdu]

JerryF, Both. mAhs are defined as miliamps x  hour @ the rated voltage (or some % close to it) So, depending on the rate at which current is flowing (being demanded by the device) the product of time and current should equal the rated mAh before the voltage is no longer within the rated spec. E.g. a 2600 mAh 3.7v battery should provide 2600 ma for 1 hour or 1ma for 2600 hours while a maintaing 3.7 volts at the terminals. The power is volts x  current (milliamps) = watts

-s

[JoeNe]

Jerry

I haven't tried your exeriments yet, but I will tonight.  Here's what I will tell you though.  Most of my recent issues are happening with a full or nearly full battery, and most of the time I am plugged in to a car charger as I travel.  The dropped calls, BT issues, etc are happening while plugged in.  My car charger does not think it is USB and charges at a good rate.

I have 2 1600 maH batteries, both of which are official Samsung.  I will report back here after the removals are restart.

[kris5747]

I find it ironic that the Samsung Droid is called Charge, because it doesn't hold a charge for even 24 hours, when you POWER IT DOWN, even. I had a Samsung Jitterbug that would hold a charge for two weeks if I didn't use it! This thing is dead in a day even when it's turned OFF, so maybe there IS  a battery problem.

[trparky]

I cheated in my test, I turned my phone's camera flash into a very expensive flashlight.  I then watched in realtime the discharge of the battery while the flash was on for more than a minute using an app called Battery Monitor Widget.  The great thing about Battery Monitor Widget is that it will track your battery's power levels over the time you use your phone and translate the data into a visual graph that you can scroll back on and look at how your phone was using the battery power.

[trparky]

In my case, the battery usage graph that Battery Monitor Widget generates barely went down at all.  So, my battery is good.

Battery Monitor Widget will also give you different stats about the battery like current temperature, overall health, and current voltage of the battery too.

[kris5747]

Where do I find it? It's not in my search results in VZ Apps

[trparky]

It's not on the VZ Apps, it's on the Android Market.  Look for an icon that has a white bag with the green Android robot mascot labeled "Market".

[HoustonHeart]

Not sure if the flash test is enough. But if you take 10  full res  flash pics on a full battery and it isn't still 100% something is wrong. I took 40 pics and Im still 100%. It dropepd to 99% after 60

[JerryF]

Looking through other threads it is obvious that some of you either do not want to or will not buy a new battery. 

I ask, did the thought ever cross your mind to go to your Verizon store, tell them your problem, have them put a new battery in your phone, and if that fixes your problem they most likely will GIVE you the new battery.  It's easy!  Why not? 

Com'on folks let's all be more proactive.

JerryF

[JerryF]

Today I had a little bit more evidence with my own phone that batteries may be causing a lot problems with charge phones.

First, my Charge phone has been PERFECT in every way.  Nothing has ever gone wrong but today I had my FIRST malfunction type problem.

To make a call I touched the PHONE icon and nothing happened.  I could not bring up the dialer.  I checked almost all of the other icons and sure enough they all worked as they should.

Then I checked the battery.  It was at 21% so I plugged it into the 110 volt 1 amp charger for 6 or 7 minutes.  I checked the battery again and it was up to a 31% charge so I took it off the charger.

I then again touched the PHONE icon and it worked perfectly.  For the next half hour I kept trying the PHONE icon and it came up as it should every time while the phone was no longer on the charger.  My battery at 21% failed to bring up the PHONE icon but at 31% it did.

My point is, if anything funny is happening check your battery and for those of you experiencing MAJOR malfunctions such as the flash camera lockup go to a Verizon store and try to find another battery that has been proven to be a good one.

You might even consider an extended power 2600 or 3500 mAh battery so you don't take it so low like I did when it was at 21%..

JerryF

[JerryF]

9/5/2011

Anyone who may be interested in learning more about their cell phone's battery might want to read the following three items.

For this one take note that when you get to the bottom of the lesson there is a "NEXT LESSON." 

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries

http://www.chargeforums.com/forum/droid-charge-help/941-charging-question-2.html

This one describes BUMP Charging.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=871051

By the way, I have done BUMP charging (once in a while to get a better charge) on my previous phones for years and did not notice a shorter battery life.  I guess I just did not do it to often.

JerryF